YIKES

Army Reservist Convicted of Sex Trafficking

Xaver Boston recruited vulnerable women with opioid addictions, prosecutors allege.

An army reservist who returned from Afghanistan earlier this year was convicted on prostitution and sex-trafficking charges, the Justice Department announced Friday. Prosecutors alleged that Xaver Boston ran a “sex-trafficking enterprise” in Charlotte, North Carolina, between 2012 and September 2017. Boston recruited young women and one teenager with drug addictions by promising to give them drugs and a place to live, prosecutors said. “In order to coerce the victims to prostitute, Boston withheld their drugs until after they completed commercial sex acts, and he withheld it as punishment if they failed to turn over all of the prostitution proceeds or otherwise violated his rules,” the Justice Department said in a press release. Boston was charged with six counts of sex trafficking and one count of “using an interstate facility to promote a prostitution enterprise.” He faces at least 90 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.